I can't choose just ONE book, so I usually say my favorite books in the genre.
However,the books that stand out is Little Women, The Last Princess by Cynthia Freeman and A Tree grows in Brooklyn, The Swan, The Brides, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, My Sweet Audrina, Belinda, Like Water for Chocolate, Rain of Gold, Thirteen Senses, Memoirs of a Geisha, collected works of Guy Du Maupassant, The Kitchen God's Wife ........just to name a few.